Bringing OpenID To The Masses: Clickpass (YC summer 07)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/11/clickpass-could-change-the-way-you-surf-the-web/

by immad • 18 years ago

87 37 18 years ago

techcrunch.com

pc• 18 years ago

Congrats! Clickpass is going to be big.

greg• 18 years ago

And it works with news.yc.

benhoyt• 18 years ago

Actually, it didn't for me. I click on "log in", then click the Clickpass drop-down, type in my own OpenID, it goes through to MyOpenID and verified that.

Then it takes me to the "merge with your existing Hacker News account", and I type my correct username/password, but then I get redirected back to News.YC and a blank page at something like http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=j3tO1pS8ox

thorax• 18 years ago

A friend of mine had this same issue

immad6• 18 years ago

I just found a workaround and fixed it. Sorry for the delay

rglullis2• 18 years ago

Seems to me now that the HN post yesterday on Techcrunch was more of a preparation to announce Clickpass and lure more TC users on its service.

Nice one-two movement.

pg• 18 years ago

I assume you're joking, but in case you're not: it was a coincidence. We didn't ask to be TechCrunched.

rglullis2• 18 years ago

It was just an observation. I think it is even better that it was a coincidence. As the saying goes: "the harder you work, the luckier you get".

But even if it wasn't, I couldn't say that there was something unethical or shady about it. Sorry if it seemed that I was implying something like that. It was far from my intention.

petenixey5• 18 years ago

Thanks for the nice comments guys, we're really excited. Total coincidence about the Techcrunch mention but incredibly lucky too as it rooted out a bug that would have slowed Clickpass to a halt today. Sometimes you just get lucky!

immad6• 18 years ago

We are on Disqus, news.yc and plaxo at the moment.

If you want to skip the intermediate pages, http://disqus.com/login and https://www.plaxo.com/signin :)

aston• 18 years ago

I'm still waiting for arclanguage.org...

immad6• 18 years ago

Since Drew was cheeky enough to ask.

digg/reddit love :)

http://digg.com/tech_news/Bringing_OpenID_To_The_Masses_Clic...

http://reddit.com/info/6bofr/comments/

dfranke• 18 years ago

I can't seem to get this to work on news.yc, at least with my self-hosted OpenID (http://openid.dfranke.us). I go through my portal and then the Clickpass portal and get redirected back to a news.yc closure URL, but it just gives me a blank page and doesn't log me in.

immad6• 18 years ago

I just found a workaround and fixed it. Sorry for the delay

wallflower• 18 years ago

>Naturally some concerns arise with any centralized login system. Doesn’t this mean a thief only has to steal one password, your Clickpass password?

Clickpass with two-factor security (e.g. SecureID) might be worth paying a subscription fee for

spif2• 18 years ago

Clickpass feels more like a single-sign-on service, wasn't the purpose of OpenID to negate this? Or am I missing something here?

petenixey5• 18 years ago

Hi Spif. Clickpass is a single-sign-on service. It's built on the OpenID protocol.

spif2• 18 years ago

Thanks, I did get that part :-) I'm wondering though why this would be a success where MS passport failed. Because it's not evil? Is usability the only left that hampers uptake of openID?

poppysan• 18 years ago

this is gonna lead to a lot of dumb old ladies sending you spam because they gave away their password. Can't wait!!!

maxwell• 18 years ago

I like it. Congrats guys.

tx• 18 years ago

How do YC companies get on TC so easily?

dcurtis• 18 years ago

Because Michael Arrington is in love with Paul Graham.

It's a secret affair, of course.

petenixey5• 18 years ago

They're good ;)

dhouston• 18 years ago

great writeup -- congrats peter and immad!

axod2• 18 years ago

For me, the whole idea of openID is flawed from the start. Why would I want one point of failure? Why would I want to use the same login details for every site I go to? That's kind of a very bad idea.

Sorry, but the whole openID thing seems like tech people making tech things that they think are technically impressive. Rather than things that are useful or solve problems for the average Joe.

There are enough password reminder/generator addons/programs etc, and most browsers have such functionality these days.

Am I missing something?

bct• 18 years ago

1. 99% of people use the same login details on every site they go to anyways. That's not likely to change. For those people OpenID is actually more secure, since their password is only ever exposed to one site.

2. Your email address is already a single point of failure for any sites with a "Forgot my password" function.

IMO an OP can be made secure enough that the benefits of OpenID outweigh the severity of a possible breach (at least for non-critical transactions).

axod2• 18 years ago

Good points. So I guess the challenge is either to convince users that OpenID gives them some advantage to just using their same old login details, or convince website owners that it is a good idea. I guess we'll see how it works out...

jey• 18 years ago

Looks like logging in with the AOL OpenID provider doesn't work on news.yc. I don't know if this is a news.yc bug or AOL OpenID bug.

herdrick• 18 years ago

Great stuff, way to go Peter and Immad!

bosshog• 18 years ago

Peter Nixey: The UK's prodigal son, no? Congratulations to Clickpass. Looks like a good service.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

I can't seem to get my news.yc username linked up to my OpenID. I login to my OpenID provider, then get to the point where I enter my news.yc username and password, but then it takes me to a blank page on news.yc. :(

Bringing OpenID To The Masses: Clickpass (YC summer 07)

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